American Psychological Assn.

Cognition and suicide; theory, research, and therapy.

Psychiatrists and psychologists from anglophone North America and Britain explore the intersection between the cognitive-behavioral approach to describing, explaining, and treating psychopathology, and the study of suicide. Among their topics are suicide from the perspective of rational emotive behavior therapy, the role of over-general memory in suicidality, and fluid vulnerability theory as a cognitive approach to understanding the process of acute and chronic suicide risk. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Contributions toward evidence-based psychocardiology; a systematic review of the literature.

Patients and cardiologists are well aware of the importance of psychosocial factors in the etiology and course of heart disease, yet the abundant research findings are seldom applied in clinical settings. To help resolve the problem, researchers in a number of medical specialties have conducted a broad meta-analytics review of the existing knowledge, and systematized it within the emerging field of psychochardiology in such a way that clinicians can understand how to integrate it into their daily practice. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Evidence-based psychotherapy; where practice and research meet.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a term that psychotherapy has borrowed from medicine; it was "evidence-based treatment" and "empirically validated treatment" in former incarnations. Goodheart, a psychologist in private practice in Princeton affiliated with Rutgers U., with her colleagues at Yale and Tufts U., introduce 11 chapters presenting a range of perspectives on EBP from practice and research. In the provocatively-titled final chapter, "Evidence-based practice: gold standard, gold plated, or fool's gold," Robert J. Sternberg (best known for his theory of successful intelligence) summarizes cautions raised in the text about EBP — e.g., the need to take into account the context of practice. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Handbook of multimethod measurement in psychology.

Despite the considerable influence that multitrait/multimethod analysis and research strategies have had on scientific psychology, accessible texts fully integrating this framework into the assessment of complex psychological phenomena have been lacking, according to Eid (U. of Geneva, Switzerland) and Diener (U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). They introduce 31 chapters filling theoretical, methodological, and applied gaps for students and researchers. Contributors address issues that need to be considered in: conducting ecologically valid field studies, convergent validity, and method selection for supporting validity. Finally, the editors recap contributors' messages that researchers need to learn about the newer sampling and testing methods, advances in statistics, and Web resources available; and apply multiple methods not just multiple measures. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Strengthening research methodology; psychological measurement and evaluation.

In honor of scholar Lee B. Sechrest, Bootzin (psychology, U. of Arizona) and McKnight (psychology, George Mason U.) compile this collection of 13 essays on measurement and methodology in psychological research, following a conference in Arizona in April of 2003. The authors of the essays — from the US, Canada, and Germany in psychology, education, medicine, and related fields — cover such topics as using formative evaluation to improve educational interventions, heroic rescue during the Holocaust, measuring social environments and coping, variations in treatment, random assignment, experimental design and data analysis, and Sechrest's legacy. Both author and subject indexes are provided, as well as a chronological bibliography of Sechrest's work. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Therapeutic alliances in couple and family therapy; an empirically informed guide to practice.

Friedlander (counseling psychology, U. at Albany, State U. of New York) and colleagues present a conceptual model designed to help therapists to evaluate the therapeutic alliance between themselves and their clients in couple and family therapy. The System for Observing Family Therapy Alliances (SOFTA) supplies clear guidelines for measuring the strength of the alliance in four key dimensions and assists practitioners in the development of effective therapeutic strategies. Clinical case examples illustrate each SOFTA dimension with culturally diverse couples and families. Observation and self- assessment forms are provided in both English and Spanish. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)